Thor: Love and Thunder

[Skipper Justin]

Apparently it’s the 5th biggest marvel opening.

 

[quinnmac000]

The issue with the films is they have lost all sense of heart and actual personality.

That's where Shang-Chi succeeded which arguably is the best on the phase 4 because it didn't rely on cameos and nostalgia to get its audience. The movie was focusing on a father who couldn't get over losing his wife which led to a massive neglect for his son and daughter and the consequences of that neglect.

This film was just a film. it lacked heart and personality and dumb Thor is getting old.

 

[Jerroddragon]

The issue with the films is they have lost all sense of heart and actual personality.

That's where Shang-Chi succeeded which arguably is the best on the phase 4 because it didn't rely on cameos and nostalgia to get its audience. The movie was focusing on a father who couldn't get over losing his wife which led to a massive neglect for his son and daughter and the consequences of that neglect.

This film was just a film. it lacked heart and personality and dumb Thor is getting old.

Looks a the black and white fight scene

Yep no sense of style at all, to each there own but the film had style and heart. The Thor and Jane stuff to me really worked...i guess people here just have never kinda seen a relationship fail because that part was really well done to me

I also think Thor is dumb mainly because of the pain he has felt...he has lost more then anyone else in the MCU and this movie is about him finally getting back to a healthy place but I'd guess he is a different person in the next film. Hell Starlord in this was a different character from the last three films he was in so I think its going to happen

 

[HalfGlass]

I liked it - but I prefer the first three Thor films over this one. Gorr and Jane Foster’s story felt like they needed to be in a super dark and serious film…this was not that. Totally underserved two very significant and emotional plot lines for easy jokes (some of which hit while others fall flat).

Also, once again, no forward movement or direction for Phase 4 at all, with two post credits scenes that made me audibly sigh.

 

[belloq87]

This didn't work for me at all, unfortunately. A tonal mess.

And I can't say I'm particularly looking forward to what they seem to be setting up for the future of this MCU corner, either.

 

[Disneyhead]

It so refreshing to see Disney do what Disney does. I call it the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire business model or Super Saturation Content. When Disney bought Who Wants To Be A Millionaire it was on TV one night a week and was a huge success. One year later it was on every night and in syndication. WWTBAM is now in the dust bin of history. Super saturation killed it.

Feige was brilliant at corraling the Disney mandate for a while. But never fail, Disney will push it to the breaking point. Everytime.

See: Star Wars

 

[Nick]

The issue with the films is they have lost all sense of heart and actual personality.

That's where Shang-Chi succeeded which arguably is the best on the phase 4 because it didn't rely on cameos and nostalgia to get its audience. The movie was focusing on a father who couldn't get over losing his wife which led to a massive neglect for his son and daughter and the consequences of that neglect.

This film was just a film. it lacked heart and personality and dumb Thor is getting old.

The worst part was there was a ton of opportunity for emotional moments in this film given some subject matter and what the characters go through, but there’s so many jokes when it should be a serious moment (just for a few minutes!) and Taika never stopped himself from going over the top here.

I also agree dumb Thor is getting very old. They made him come off as stupider than ever imo in this movie. We've seen it 4 times now. Hopefully we're moving towards father Thor.

Spoiler

I think the movie could've been much better had the movie started off a mile a minute with joke when the Guardians were there. After that, slowly taper off as the film goes on and Thor becomes more and more serious.

This wasn't light subject matter Taika was dealing with but he made it all feel so emotionless. We're deal with a guy who wants to kill ALL Gods. Jane has Stage 4 cancer and dies. Gorr's child dies at the beginning of the film and getting her back is what makes him stop, and Thor is now her adoptive father.

Apparently it’s the 5th biggest marvel opening.

A big part of this is because showings now play like it’s not a preview day, but opening day.

I’m old enough to remember waiting to watch the Deathly Hallows films (roughly when Iron Man came out) at 12:01 am, WITHOUT reserved showings, so you had to show up early to steak out a good spot. The times then started to move to 11, then 10, 9, etc until it settled right around 6 for the longest time.

So yes, 5th biggest preview, but MoM is also in the Top five ahead of Thor and it performed wonky as well. It was expected to make far more domestic based on its preview day, but you can’t judge all preview days the same because the times they’ve started has been different depending on the movie and Marvel movies have become more and more front loaded.

 

[Mad Dog]

It so refreshing to see Disney do what Disney does. I call it the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire business model or Super Saturation Content. When Disney bought Who Wants To Be A Millionaire it was on TV one night a week and was a huge success. One year later it was on every night and in syndication. WWTBAM is now in the dust bin of history. Super saturation killed it.

Feige was brilliant at corraling the Disney mandate for a while. But never fail, Disney will push it to the breaking point. Everytime.

See: Star Wars

Yes. Over saturate and what was new, fresh and exciting becomes commonplace and meh..............Speaking of Millionaire, ABC (before Disney ownership) did the same thing with the Adam West Batman. Huge gigantic ratings and they put it on three nights a week. Ratings steadily dropped and it disappeared, until it was syndicated decades later. Funny, that show was Super Hero stuff too.....and the ' Too much social media/screen time generation' has a short attention span as it is.

 

[Nick]

The Friday numbers for the film came in at $69.5M and on pace for $130-$140M. The concern though is that this film picked up the second consecutive B+ CinemaScore for the MCU and if you take out No Way Home (considering that was a Sony release), this is the third straight movie that Disney themselves have released that has picked up a Cinema Score in the B-range as Eternals had a CinemaScore of a B in November.

It so refreshing to see Disney do what Disney does. I call it the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire business model or Super Saturation Content. When Disney bought Who Wants To Be A Millionaire it was on TV one night a week and was a huge success. One year later it was on every night and in syndication. WWTBAM is now in the dust bin of history. Super saturation killed it.

Feige was brilliant at corraling the Disney mandate for a while. But never fail, Disney will push it to the breaking point. Everytime.

See: Star Wars

Disney never oversaturated Star Wars anywhere near the way they have with Marvel. I really enjoyed 2 out of the 3 sequels, loved Rogue One, enjoyed Solo and love The Mandalorian. They themselves actually took a step back and stopped saturating the cinematic marketplace. They were successful with 4 out of 5 films grossing over $1B, but realized they needed to take a step back.

The MCU is being killed by D+ sort of imo. The constant meh TV shows have started to take away from my overall enthusiasm and I think now that they're putting out 6-8 projects per year, they're spreading themselves too thin and the projects are becoming messier. 6-8 projects per year.

Think about that all it takes is three years of putting out Star Wars content at the pace that MCU content is now coming out and you've released enough content to cover the entirety of everything Star Wars will have released under Disney ownership by the end of this year (21 projects, 11 of them being animated). If it was just 3-4 movies per year, I could deal with a stinker here or there, but when i'm constantly being fed a bad taste in my mouth, it doesn't give me a ton of hope going forward, especially when i'm constantly just getting a directionless feeling out of the franchise.

Star Wars content I was talking about:
- Sequel trilogy (3 movies)
- Rogue One
- Solo
- The Mandalorian (2 seasons)
- The Book of Boba Fett
- Obi-Wan Kenobi
- Andor
- Resistance (2 Seasons)
- Rebels (4 seasons)
- Clone Wars (Final Season)
- The Bad Batch (2 Seasons)
- Visions (2 seasons)

 

[Cwoolboy]

Thor: Love and Thunder had a good deal of sick needle-drops, some great action, and a whole lot of heart. Lots of props go to Christian Bale as Gorr, one of the stronger Marvel villains (Bale injects some fun into an otherwise tragic character. He's GORRRR-REAT!). There was a good deal I really dug (This is Marvel’s queerest film, and is proud of it). Unfortunately, it feels like Marvel gave Taika Waititi a mandate to re-do Ragnarok (a good deal feels like a repeat of that film, but not as good). There’s also an overflowing cornucopia of jokes, and while most land, the ones that don’t feel awkward and kind-of cringe (regardless, it still feels like too much).

In the end, Thor: Love and Thunder is a lot of popcorn-munching fun. It’s very good, but in an age where we’re used to home-runs from the studio, a bases-loaded situation still (unfortunately) results in one of Marvel’s weaker films.

3.5 STARS

 

[OrlandoGuy]

The Friday numbers for the film came in at $69.5M and on pace for $130-$140M. The concern though is that this film picked up the second consecutive B+ CinemaScore for the MCU and if you take out No Way Home (considering that was a Sony release), this is the third straight movie that Disney themselves have released that has picked up a Cinema Score in the B-range as Eternals had a CinemaScore of a B in November.


Disney never oversaturated Star Wars anywhere near the way they have with Marvel. I really enjoyed 2 out of the 3 sequels, loved Rogue One, enjoyed Solo and love The Mandalorian. They themselves actually took a step back and stopped saturating the cinematic marketplace. They were successful with 4 out of 5 films grossing over $1B, but realized they needed to take a step back.

The MCU is being killed by D+ sort of imo. The constant meh TV shows have started to take away from my overall enthusiasm and I think now that they're putting out 6-8 projects per year, they're spreading themselves too thin and the projects are becoming messier. 6-8 projects per year.

Think about that all it takes is three years of putting out Star Wars content at the pace that MCU content is now coming out and you've released enough content to cover the entirety of everything Star Wars will have released under Disney ownership by the end of this year (21 projects, 11 of them being animated). If it was just 3-4 movies per year, I could deal with a stinker here or there, but when i'm constantly being fed a bad taste in my mouth, it doesn't give me a ton of hope going forward, especially when i'm constantly just getting a directionless feeling out of the franchise.

Star Wars content I was talking about:
- Sequel trilogy (3 movies)
- Rogue One
- Solo
- The Mandalorian (2 seasons)
- The Book of Boba Fett
- Obi-Wan Kenobi
- Andor
- Resistance (2 Seasons)
- Rebels (4 seasons)
- Clone Wars (Final Season)
- The Bad Batch (2 Seasons)
- Visions (2 seasons)

Star Wars may have less content total but all of it is superfluous—we didn’t need a sequel trilogy, let alone ANY backstory on what a bunch of random characters were doing in random slices of time.

At least Marvel still (theoretically) has stories to tell—the problem is stretching Feige, evidently the glue holding the whole thing together, way too thin.

With that said, I haven’t seen Thor yet but I’m still hopeful. The last time a bunch of die hards hated something was Last Jedi and I thought that was great (especially compared to other highly-touted content in the last few years like Joker, Force Awakens, and Ragnarok).

 

[Nick]

Star Wars may have less content total but all of it is superfluous—we didn’t need a sequel trilogy, let alone ANY backstory on what a bunch of random characters were doing in random slices of time.

At least Marvel still (theoretically) has stories to tell—the problem is stretching Feige, evidently the glue holding the whole thing together, way too thin.

With that said, I haven’t seen Thor yet but I’m still hopeful. The last time a bunch of die hards hated something was Last Jedi and I thought that was great (especially compared to other highly-touted content in the last few years like Joker, Force Awakens, and Ragnarok).

I'm among those who love TLJ as I thought it was, individually, an absolute masterpiece. The problem with the movie is that as a part of a trilogy, Rian closed off most plot lines, although there was certainly a better way to handle it than how JJ did with RotS, which was basically just throwing canon to the wind and saying screw it.

I do blame LucasFilm for not having an overall vision and for not delaying the film because they wanted to get a film out every two years. Think about it, had they delayed it, it would've been pushed into 2020 and then ultimately 2021 or 2022, meaning a hell of a lot more time to give the movie the love it deserved. It probably still would've sucked, but who knows. Maybe they take the Covid break to re-write and reshoot some scenes to improve on a rushed product.

As for superfluous content you mention that we aren't getting from Marvel, i'd argue that Black Widow and literally every Disney+ show is unnecessary. Sure, the Disney+ shows help to introduce us to more characters or to flesh out existing ones, but lets be real, they only exist to keep people subscribed to Disney+.

 

[OrlandoGuy]

I'm among those who love TLJ as I thought it was, individually, an absolute masterpiece. The problem with the movie is that as a part of a trilogy, Rian closed off most plot lines, although there was certainly a better way to handle it than how JJ did with RotS, which was basically just throwing canon to the wind and saying screw it.

I do blame LucasFilm for not having an overall vision and for not delaying the film because they wanted to get a film out every two years. Think about it, had they delayed it, it would've been pushed into 2020 and then ultimately 2021 or 2022, meaning a hell of a lot more time to give the movie the love it deserved. It probably still would've sucked, but who knows. Maybe they take the Covid break to re-write and reshoot some scenes to improve on a rushed product.

As for superfluous content you mention that we aren't getting from Marvel, i'd argue that Black Widow and literally every Disney+ show is unnecessary. Sure, the Disney+ shows help to introduce us to more characters or to flesh out existing ones, but lets be real, they only exist to keep people subscribed to Disney+.

Haha, yeah I think I’m agreeing with you. This AMOUNT of MCU content could be fine if it was any good…the problem is it’s all really superficial. If they went back to focusing on 2-3 major projects a year (and an overarching end goal that audiences could understand) we’d be in good shape.

 

[Nick]

Haha, yeah I think I’m agreeing with you. This AMOUNT of MCU content could be fine if it was any good…the problem is it’s all really superficial. If they went back to focusing on 2-3 major projects a year (and an overarching end goal that audiences could understand) we’d be in good shape.

Yeah, I think the problem is they seem to be:
1.) stretching themselves too thin so that Feige has to pick and choose which projects he gives his attention to and which projects he delegates on. TBH, I wish Feige would separate the Films from Disney+ shows in some way. Get a new head that works at Marvel Studios and is intamitely involved in everything, reports to Feige, etc, but this way Feige doesn't have to worry about the shows as much.
2.) there's too much going on, two many different pockets of the universe forming and none of them seem to be showing any signs of connecting.

I watched MCU films in phases one and two here and there. I wasn't the type to watch every movie until Civil War (tbh, it was honestly hearing that Spider-man was going to be involved that started to really make me watch). But the thing about the earlier phases and even phase three was that it was so much easier to just jump in. Right now, you either are a fan or you aren't (specific circumstances aside) and jumping in is next to impossible at this point when you're 29 films and 6 (coming up on 7 with She-Hulk) Disney+ shows deep.

If someone asked for an explanation on what happened to remind you of what happened with Wanda before MoM, you normally didn't have to spend a bunch of time saying "in Endgame, Wanda was an Avenger and practically beat Thanos one on one. Vision died even after she had to kill him, but then she had a Disney+ show and took over a whole town and and she created a family and Vision was back! and she had kids! but then she killed a bunch of people and read the darkhold. it's an evil book so she's probably gonna be the bad guy!" If someone hadn't seen Wanda in awhile (remember she was mostly a side character before WV and had less than 20 total minutes of screen time), they shouldn't need that level of explanation to know where she's at.

 

[Brian G.]

I liked it, BUT I can see where a lot of people had problems with it. Even as someone who did enjoy it, I was like "OK, let's dial it back just a tad". With the movie coming in under 2 hours, it could've afforded 10-20 min to flesh out a few more scenes and let the plot breathe a little, especially with all the zaniness. As far as "Dumb Thor" - I took it as Thor's Mid-Life Crisis, and he started shaking it off as the film concluded and his character arc completed.

Still, I had a lot of fun with the movie, and there were some visually striking scenes. I liked Ragnarok better, but this was fine.

BUT - Phase 4 still has the wheels spinning with nowhere to go.

 

[Nick]

As far as "Dumb Thor" - I took it as Thor's Mid-Life Crisis, and he started shaking it off as the film concluded and his character arc completed.

This was a positive for me at the very least. The ending of the movie feels like they will have him set to literally have to be more mature going forward in either a Thor 5 or whenever he next appears (It's possible we see him in a cameo on Disney+ or something at some point, but we won't be seeing him for quite awhile it would seem because the entire 2023 slate is set and 2024 is looking like we may not see him in anything either. I'd say it's possible we see him in whatever She-Hulk and Hulk get involved in on the movie side? She-Hulk was a love interest of Thor in the comics.

That said, I don't care for how they directed or wrote him in this movie almost at all (he literally sounds exactly like Scooby-Doo as he say "Jaaaaane?". There's was a few gags that were funny the first few times... and then they kept doing them. Taika DOES know how to be cleverly funny, but this movie feels like the humor was written for kids.

 

[Jerroddragon]

Saw Thor again and liked it

Like dr strange and moon knight before it, I really enjoyed them all more then others

 

[Nick]

Like dr strange and moon knight before it, I really enjoyed them all more then others

I was a big fan of Moon Knight and very much enjoyed MoM, too. Thor just wasn't it for me.

If you are going in just wanting a "Classic Thor Adventure", then sure, you'll probably have a fun time with it as a popcorn movie. But the movie just structurally and tonally has issues that are hard to look past and i'm a big MCU fan that is normally willing to give them the benefit of the doubt because i'm biased.

 

[Skold]

Great movie!

Yep, I said it.

Let's start with this "dumb Thor" crap. In Norse mythology, Thor is dumb. And arrogant. And extremely powerful. If you would like to read more contemporary fiction about Norse mythology, may I suggest Neil Gaiman's book. He has a current comic w/ P. Craig Russell illustrating, as well. Thor is dumb. Always was.

This was a pretty great MCU movie.

Pros:
Colorful costumes
Overall story
Helmets
GOTG, but only for a few minutes. Loved that!

Cons:
Zeus skirt dance. This is the scene everyone is talking about when they say "trying to hard". It was embarrassing, to be sure.


7.5 out of 10.

 

[Nick]

I would simply like to know how...

Spoiler

the central motive for Gorr was to get to eternity so could make his one wish. Somehow Thor didn't think to bring up eternity at any point during literally any Avenger film? They could've defeated Thanos so easily! #ContinuityError